Files

Abstract

In a household, female labor force participation has important consequences for the household production processes. As a result of the decision to participate more money is coming into the household, but less time is available to spend on housework and leisure activities. The objective of this paper is to estimate household cost functions and the shodaw price assigned by households to housework. We assume that these concepts are significantly different in families where both spouses are participating in the labor force, and those where only one of them is participating. Hence they depend on the discrete choice of the household whether the female will participate or not. We describe the behavior of the household by means of two distinct r6gimes and an endogenous switchig equation explaning the participation decision. Some of the basic determinants of the participation decision are: number of children at home, the age of the female and the income opportunities for the female. The two rftimes are both described by the simultaneous equation model explaning the labor supply, the hours spent on household work by both partners and the shadow price assigned to housework. The model is estimated on a large data base containing 4000 households, collected in the Netherlands in 1983.

Details

PDF

Statistics

from
to
Export
Download Full History